The DiEugennio review of Chris Mathews worthless book (on JFK) misses the mark

After twice reading Jim DiEugenio's critique of Chris Mathews lousy book "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero" I got to state that I'm not surprised that Jim missed the mark. Its ANOTHER typical case of DiEugenio or CTKA for that matter getting consumed with detail and totally ignoring the big picture.

For starters I don't disagree with the points posed in DiEugenio's critique. Mathews is a mainstream fair weather phony Liberal who will always find a way to twist his core values (if he even has any that is) in order to keep his job in the political news field. Has disappointed me for at least twenty years. His latest slightly more Progressive incarnation on MSNBC being the result of him competing with the great work his fellow associate Rachel Maddow does. While Maddow won't bite a chain saw (like touching 9/11 truth or JFK assassination conspiracy) she's otherwise tough as nails. A good influence not only on Chris Mathews but the mainstream media in general. Thank God for Rachel Maddow!

However my problem with DiEugenio's review is simple. He misses the main problem with Chris Mathews (other than Chris being the will of the wisp, phony and unprincipled prick that he is):

At no point in the book review does DiEugenio mention that as of this date Chris Mathews has never, not even once mentioned CONSPIRACY in the death of JFK. OK I'm not surprised at Mathews' refusal to smell the coffee on JFK. However the general assassination research community should be UP IN ARMS that Mathews never references the obvious CIA complicity in the assassination of the president. A man who has always worshiped Kennedy and knows or pretends to know much about the great man JFK. DiEugenio should have been ALL OVER MATHEWS for this continuing oversight. Instead though he drones on and on about the comparative trivial.

. . .

This is what has always disappointed me about DiEugenio and CTKA: Inability to ask the right questions and/or put together a cohesive PLAN to educate the masses on the shadow governing bodies that warp and mutilate democracy here in the USA. Jim Fetzer in his review of Seamus Coogan's butcherery of John Hankey recently said:

"In CTKA’s critique, “The Dark Legacy of John Hankey”, however, Seamus Coogan commits so many serious blunders in his discussion of the assassination that anyone less familiar with the eddies and currents of JFK research might suspect it was a work of disinformation".

Actually Professor Fetzer I do highly suspect that CTKA is a continuing work of disinformation. Watch them: they always fumble the ball on the one yard line. Predictable. THAT kind of play can not be a mistake. Not when it happens nearly weekly. CTKA is to the community what Gary Mack and Gerald Posner are to the less educated masses: Tools. There can be no mistake of this. Bad planning so consistently can be no accident!

CTKA AND DiEugenio are to my mind are like the fisherman who lay nets for guppies and yet throws the Marlins back into the sea. They SEEM to play a good game until you realize that they are determined to drop the ball short of a touchdown. And they do this every time.

Lee ‘the pigeon poster’ Cahalan strikes again! Anyone who follows this forum knows that DiEugenio and I aren’t exactly allies. I think his allows his biases to lead him to be careless with his facts. And he is so pissed at me he said he will never reply to any of my posts again. But if Cahalan had bothered to follow the existent thread on DiEugenio’s review of the book he would have seen that he said “I did not mention the assassination itself because Chris did not.” This IMO was a logical decision there already are many articles about the assassination on CTKA, his focus was on what he believed to be Matthews’ distortion of JFK’s record.

It appears that his real beef with DiEugenio is that the latter is dismissive of crackpot ‘researchers’ like John Hankey, whom Cahalan is quite taken with. He even said the people who run CTKA “are disinformation specialists. Better tools than Gary Mack, Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner perhaps but clearly full of bull crap. The only question I have remaining is whether they have been coerced through threats of violence or (presumably like Gary Mack) are sold out, greedy well paid lackeys.”* Much as I’ve disagreed with them in the past, I’ve seen no indication they don’t honestly believe everything they’ve said about the 1960s assassinations and their victims. And people who know them personally can hopefully confirm this but I doubt either are wealthy.

Thanks Len. I'd been worried that my reference to Chris Mathews as an "unprincipled prick" was a violation of some forum rule. Besides I don't truly hate Mathews. He'd probably make a good neighbor. Yet my words had me concerned I was being too harsh on him. But after reading your personal attack I feel confident that the moderators may just let me get away with dissing Mathews as a prick. After all when a person such as yourself dispenses continual literary diarrhea? I needn't fear serious forum censorship of my own opinions.

So maybe I should give DiEugenio a second chance: If he refuses to answer Colby's worthless posts? He and I share at least some common ground...

Regardless of the remark mentioning “I did not mention the assassination itself because Chris did not.” the DiEugenio response is seriously remiss. He might as well have reviewed the Bush administration and left out the two wars and failed economy. Chris Mathews' at least tacit support of the Warren commission being the rhinoceros in the room that no one wants to talk about. The lack of holding Mathews accountable for his weakness on JFK murder is a (typical) huge dysfunction of DiEugenio's efforts. The reason I say that he simply must be a tool. No other logical conclusion can be made save and except perhaps that of a massive ego. To get his voice on the radio or critiques published.

In fact DiEugenio is bothered by Hankey because, unlike himself, John is actually doing something to network and help the cause. As a matter of fact I would even almost condone Alex Jones over Jim DiEugenio. No one should say that CTKA is actually doing something positive. Not on balance that is. They with their endless regurgitation of trivial and useless "facts".

Pete Seeger is known for saying: "it is easier to be critical than correct". In fact all that DiEgenio is is a critic. If he quit assassination research tomorrow the community would not be diminished in the slightest. What has he ever done besides criticizing? Nothing I say.

Pete Seeger is known for saying: "it is easier to be critical than correct". In fact all that DiEgenio is is a critic. If he quit assassination research tomorrow the community would not be diminished in the slightest. What has he ever done besides criticizing? Nothing I say.

I’m not going to waste my time giving you more than a superficial reply, I doubt anyone besides me pays much (if any) attention why you say and I actually agree that DiEugenio’s research can often be faulty. I love the irony of constantly repeating that Pete Seeger quote, what have YOU ever done besides criticizing?

In the meantime? Welcome to "ignore" Len...

LOL, are so tone deaf that you fail to realize that doesn’t bother me in the least?

Thanks Len. I'd been worried that my reference to Chris Mathews as an "unprincipled prick" was a violation of some forum rule. Besides I don't truly hate Mathews. He'd probably make a good neighbor. Yet my words had me concerned I was being too harsh on him. But after reading your personal attack I feel confident that the moderators may just let me get away with dissing Mathews as a prick. After all when a person such as yourself dispenses continual literary diarrhea? I needn't fear serious forum censorship of my own opinions.

So maybe I should give DiEugenio a second chance: If he refuses to answer Colby's worthless posts? He and I share at least some common ground...

Regardless of the remark mentioning “I did not mention the assassination itself because Chris did not.” the DiEugenio response is seriously remiss. He might as well have reviewed the Bush administration and left out the two wars and failed economy. Chris Mathews' at least tacit support of the Warren commission being the rhinoceros in the room that no one wants to talk about. The lack of holding Mathews accountable for his weakness on JFK murder is a (typical) huge dysfunction of DiEugenio's efforts. The reason I say that he simply must be a tool. No other logical conclusion can be made save and except perhaps that of a massive ego. To get his voice on the radio or critiques published.

In fact DiEugenio is bothered by Hankey because, unlike himself, John is actually doing something to network and help the cause. As a matter of fact I would even almost condone Alex Jones over Jim DiEugenio. No one should say that CTKA is actually doing something positive. Not on balance that is. They with their endless regurgitation of trivial and useless "facts".

Pete Seeger is known for saying: "it is easier to be critical than correct". In fact all that DiEgenio is is a critic. If he quit assassination research tomorrow the community would not be diminished in the slightest. What has he ever done besides criticizing? Nothing I say.

In the meantime? Welcome to "ignore" Len...

Lee, your post does in fact violate a few rules. The most serious of which is your questioning DiEugenio's credibility, i.e. your questioning if he is not some sort of disinformation artist. Such finger-pointing leads nowhere, and is forbidden. I mean, what's to stop him from responding by saying naddy naddy noo, you're the disinformation artist, blah blah blah?

You should go back and remove those sections from your post.

As far as your basic point regarding Jim's review--that it doesn't deal with the assassination--it mystifies me why you think a review of a book on Kennedy's presidency should focus on his death. Jim is an actual historian, and doesn't confine his interest in Kennedy and the sixties to the assassinations. Matthews, who has made his LN views well-known, had the good sense to write a book about Kennedy in which he kept these views to himself. He should be applauded for that, IMO, as they would prove a needless distraction from the book he wanted to write.

There is no doubt in my mind that John Hankey has a far better understanding of the JFK assassination than that ignorant jackass Seamus Coogan.

I do not endorse everything John Hankey believes in, but I do think he is spot on the money as far as George Herbert Walker Bush being involved deeply in the JFK assassination. Hankey does make many simple mistakes in his work. But he is right about Bush.

GHW Bush says he does not remember where he was on 11/22/63; he thinks he was somewhere down in Texas.

I am serious: that is enough for someone to make a citizen's arrest of GHW Bush for complicity in the JFK assassination. GHW Bush, who has lived a very dirty CIA career for decades, and who was a US Senate candidate in Texas and staying in the Sheraton Hotel on 11/21/63 and who at times was in Dallas on 11/22/63 says he can't remember where he was.

I think he was organizing the assassination of JFK and using his Senate campaign as cover to do it. I bet GHW Bush was coordinating with Gen. Edward Lansdale on the JFK assassination.

Did you know there is a picture of Ed Lansdale taken with Oliver North in the 1980's? North considered Ed Lansdale to be a model for him and North said he was "Lansdalized." VP GHW Bush was the one who was running (or "supervising") Oliver North as North prosecuted the not so secret war with Nicaragua in the 1980's and funded it with gargantuan government sponsored cocaine smuggling.

GHW Bush has been dirty, dirty, dirty for decades.

Russ Baker (Family of Secrets) and Wim Dankbaar ( http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm )
have done a better job of explaining the GHW Bush angle to the JFK assassination than Hankey. Nevertheless, I agree with his thesis: GHW Bush was involved.

Ace JFK researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson has done some great work in this area; Russ Baker bought all of Adamson's groundbreaking research.

On February 15, President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest award, to a group of people which includes former president George H.W. Bush. Having spent five years researching the elder Bush and discovering a staggering array of secrets to the man's life--none of them favorable, I was curious why Obama gave Bush the medal.

Officially, it goes to individuals "who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Since that covers just about anything, there's no real need to justify giving the award to "Bush 41." In fact, the group being honored this year includes the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, baseball great Stan "the Man" Musial, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, author Maya Angelou and investor Warren Buffett. Over the years, it has gone to every president from JFK (some posthumously)--through Reagan, who got it from his former veep: George H.W. Bush. They skipped Nixon, so obviously there's nothing mandatory about giving the award to presidents--especially not when a president is ousted before serving out his term. Clinton did not give it to the elder Bush, nor did the younger Bush give it to his father, and so when it came to be Obama's turn to hand out medals, perhaps the pressure was intense.

Notwithstanding the inevitability of the process, President Obama needed to trot out some explanation or other as to why each recipient was deserving. In remarks at the ceremony [2], he said that H.W.'s "His life is a testament that public service is a noble calling....his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit.” And he referred to Mr. Bush's “extraordinary life of service and of sacrifice.”

His life has certainly been extraordinary. Though whether "decency" is the right term, or whether his activities "reflect the very best of the American spirit," or whether his has been a "life...of sacrifice" seem to be debatable.

There's another side to the elder Bush, and it is hard to believe that Obama is completely unaware of any of this. It goes to the heart of Bush's purported "humility," and whether it is truly humility--or his need to hide so many secrets. Especially as it relates, remarkably, to the assassination of another president, John F. Kennedy.

Here are some questions that should have been asked of George H.W. Bush before concluding that his life is an open book, or that whatever he did to deserve the Medal of Freedom is based on commonly understood events. These questions are based on revelations from my book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years [3], of which the Obama White House is aware, and copies of which can be found in major American bookstores and libraries, including the Library of Congress. The underlying points are all documented and footnoted--and some of these questions have appeared before in an earlier post on this site and others.

- Former president Bush, we all know that you served for a single year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What about the fact trail suggesting that, just like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, you actually spent your entire adult life prior to becoming vice president working in covert operations--but unlike Putin, have not admitted that? What about documentation showing that, as far back as the early 1950s, your small but hyperactive company, Zapata Offshore, was commercial cover for super-secret ops?

- Some years ago you claimed not to remember where you were on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963? Have you since been able to recall?

- Can you tell us about your decades-long friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, the man who was in and out of Lee Harvey Oswald's house on almost a daily basis in the year before the Kennedy assassination?

- Did you, as characterized in an FBI memo, work as a CIA officer in tandem with Cuban exiles at the time of the Kennedy assassination?

- Why have you never spoken publicly about the documented call you made to the FBI on Nov 22, 1963, in which you identified yourself fully and claimed to have information on a possible suspect in Kennedy's death? What was the purpose of that call, in which you mentioned your whereabouts at the time of the call, 1:45pm, as Tyler, Texas, i.e. about 99 miles away but just a short flight on the private plane on which you were traveling? Why did you tell the FBI that you were en route next to Dallas and would stay at the Sheraton there when you had already been at the Sheraton the night before — and right after that call flew to Dallas but only to switch planes and fly back immediately to Houston? Why were you giving the FBI the impression you would be staying in Dallas the night after the assassination instead of letting them know you had stayed there the night before the assassination?

- Why was your own assistant at the home of the man you would finger as a suspect in the shooting, and why did he end up providing the man with an alibi? Was the ultimate purpose of that call not to cause the alleged suspect any permanent harm, but merely to use the call as an excuse to state in government files that you were in a place other than Dallas?

- Since you claimed not to remember where you were when Kennedy was killed, how is it that after these FBI memos surfaced, your wife Barbara suddenly found and published an old letter placing you and her in Tyler, Texas shortly after the shooting?

- On the day of the assassination, were you in touch with your friend and Republican running mate Jack Crichton, a military intelligence figure who was connected to figures forcing their way into the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade? The same Crichton who controlled the man who served as the interpreter between Oswald's wife and police and reframed her words so as to implicate Oswald in Kennedy's shooting? The same Crichton who was working out of a secret underground communications bunker below the streets of Dallas? The same Crichton whose secret military intelligence unit counted dozens of men who simultaneously held jobs as Dallas police officers? The same Crichton who did secret oil industry intelligence work in the Middle East while you did intelligence related oil industry work via your company, Zapata Offshore?

- Finally, do you know people who consider the events of November 22, 1963 to, in their minds, "reflect the very best of the American spirit?" You say almost nothing, ever, about the Kennedy assassination, even skipping over it in your own memoir, which details much more trivial events of the same year. Why is that? And why then, in your eulogy for former President Ford, a member of the increasingly-discredited Warren Commission, did you go out of your way to oddly praise him for promoting the increasingly-discredited "single bullet theory?" You said:

“After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.”

Why did you, so bizarrely, smile when you uttered those words?

Now, with your Medal of Freedom, given you by a Democratic president who ran as an agent of change, you truly seem to be enjoying the last laugh.

There is no doubt in my mind that John Hankey has a far better understanding of the JFK assassination than that ignorant jackass Seamus Coogan.

I do not endorse everything John Hankey believes in, but I do think he is spot on the money as far as George Herbert Walker Bush being involved deeply in the JFK assassination. Hankey does make many simple mistakes in his work. But he is right about Bush.

GHW Bush says he does not remember where he was on 11/22/63; he thinks he was somewhere down in Texas.

I am serious: that is enough for someone to make a citizen's arrest of GHW Bush for complicity in the JFK assassination. GHW Bush, who has lived a very dirty CIA career for decades, and who was a US Senate candidate in Texas and staying in the Sheraton Hotel on 11/21/63 and who at times was in Dallas on 11/22/63 says he can't remember where he was.

I think he was organizing the assassination of JFK and using his Senate campaign as cover to do it. I bet GHW Bush was coordinating with Gen. Edward Lansdale on the JFK assassination.

Did you know there is a picture of Ed Lansdale taken with Oliver North in the 1980's? North considered Ed Lansdale to be a model for him and North said he was "Lansdalized." VP GHW Bush was the one who was running (or "supervising") Oliver North as North prosecuted the not so secret war with Nicaragua in the 1980's and funded it with gargantuan government sponsored cocaine smuggling.

GHW Bush has been dirty, dirty, dirty for decades.

Russ Baker (Family of Secrets) and Wim Dankbaar ( http://jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm )have done a better job of explaining the GHW Bush angle to the JFK assassination than Hankey. Nevertheless, I agree with his thesis: GHW Bush was involved.

Ace JFK researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson has done some great work in this area; Russ Baker bought all of Adamson's groundbreaking research.

On February 15, President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest award, to a group of people which includes former president George H.W. Bush. Having spent five years researching the elder Bush and discovering a staggering array of secrets to the man's life--none of them favorable, I was curious why Obama gave Bush the medal.

Officially, it goes to individuals "who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Since that covers just about anything, there's no real need to justify giving the award to "Bush 41." In fact, the group being honored this year includes the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, baseball great Stan "the Man" Musial, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, author Maya Angelou and investor Warren Buffett. Over the years, it has gone to every president from JFK (some posthumously)--through Reagan, who got it from his former veep: George H.W. Bush. They skipped Nixon, so obviously there's nothing mandatory about giving the award to presidents--especially not when a president is ousted before serving out his term. Clinton did not give it to the elder Bush, nor did the younger Bush give it to his father, and so when it came to be Obama's turn to hand out medals, perhaps the pressure was intense.

Notwithstanding the inevitability of the process, President Obama needed to trot out some explanation or other as to why each recipient was deserving. In remarks at the ceremony [2], he said that H.W.'s "His life is a testament that public service is a noble calling....his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit.” And he referred to Mr. Bush's “extraordinary life of service and of sacrifice.”

His life has certainly been extraordinary. Though whether "decency" is the right term, or whether his activities "reflect the very best of the American spirit," or whether his has been a "life...of sacrifice" seem to be debatable.

There's another side to the elder Bush, and it is hard to believe that Obama is completely unaware of any of this. It goes to the heart of Bush's purported "humility," and whether it is truly humility--or his need to hide so many secrets. Especially as it relates, remarkably, to the assassination of another president, John F. Kennedy.

Here are some questions that should have been asked of George H.W. Bush before concluding that his life is an open book, or that whatever he did to deserve the Medal of Freedom is based on commonly understood events. These questions are based on revelations from my book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years [3], of which the Obama White House is aware, and copies of which can be found in major American bookstores and libraries, including the Library of Congress. The underlying points are all documented and footnoted--and some of these questions have appeared before in an earlier post on this site and others.

- Former president Bush, we all know that you served for a single year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What about the fact trail suggesting that, just like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, you actually spent your entire adult life prior to becoming vice president working in covert operations--but unlike Putin, have not admitted that? What about documentation showing that, as far back as the early 1950s, your small but hyperactive company, Zapata Offshore, was commercial cover for super-secret ops?

- Some years ago you claimed not to remember where you were on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963? Have you since been able to recall?

- Can you tell us about your decades-long friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, the man who was in and out of Lee Harvey Oswald's house on almost a daily basis in the year before the Kennedy assassination?

- Did you, as characterized in an FBI memo, work as a CIA officer in tandem with Cuban exiles at the time of the Kennedy assassination?

- Why have you never spoken publicly about the documented call you made to the FBI on Nov 22, 1963, in which you identified yourself fully and claimed to have information on a possible suspect in Kennedy's death? What was the purpose of that call, in which you mentioned your whereabouts at the time of the call, 1:45pm, as Tyler, Texas, i.e. about 99 miles away but just a short flight on the private plane on which you were traveling? Why did you tell the FBI that you were en route next to Dallas and would stay at the Sheraton there when you had already been at the Sheraton the night before — and right after that call flew to Dallas but only to switch planes and fly back immediately to Houston? Why were you giving the FBI the impression you would be staying in Dallas the night after the assassination instead of letting them know you had stayed there the night before the assassination?

- Why was your own assistant at the home of the man you would finger as a suspect in the shooting, and why did he end up providing the man with an alibi? Was the ultimate purpose of that call not to cause the alleged suspect any permanent harm, but merely to use the call as an excuse to state in government files that you were in a place other than Dallas?

- Since you claimed not to remember where you were when Kennedy was killed, how is it that after these FBI memos surfaced, your wife Barbara suddenly found and published an old letter placing you and her in Tyler, Texas shortly after the shooting?

- On the day of the assassination, were you in touch with your friend and Republican running mate Jack Crichton, a military intelligence figure who was connected to figures forcing their way into the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade? The same Crichton who controlled the man who served as the interpreter between Oswald's wife and police and reframed her words so as to implicate Oswald in Kennedy's shooting? The same Crichton who was working out of a secret underground communications bunker below the streets of Dallas? The same Crichton whose secret military intelligence unit counted dozens of men who simultaneously held jobs as Dallas police officers? The same Crichton who did secret oil industry intelligence work in the Middle East while you did intelligence related oil industry work via your company, Zapata Offshore?

- Finally, do you know people who consider the events of November 22, 1963 to, in their minds, "reflect the very best of the American spirit?" You say almost nothing, ever, about the Kennedy assassination, even skipping over it in your own memoir, which details much more trivial events of the same year. Why is that? And why then, in your eulogy for former President Ford, a member of the increasingly-discredited Warren Commission, did you go out of your way to oddly praise him for promoting the increasingly-discredited "single bullet theory?" You said:

“After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.”

Why did you, so bizarrely, smile when you uttered those words?

Now, with your Medal of Freedom, given you by a Democratic president who ran as an agent of change, you truly seem to be enjoying the last laugh.

Robert: Good points about Obama. Why indeed? I think -sadly- we know the answer.

I thouhgt JImD"s book review did touch on Matthew's avoidance of all conspiracy truth. I only read it one time when it was first published and did not find that problem with it.